Orange developer task force targets red tape, Sunshine law

A developer-led task force wants to streamline Orange County growth regulations and create jobs partly by shielding a key growth review panel from open-meeting rules and giving developments a quicker revival after being voted down.

Other proposals call for eliminating certain community meetings on smaller projects, allowing for more frequent land-use changes, and offering flexibility on rules for building heights, lot sizes and parking spaces on larger or more complex developments.

"It would cut a lot of the red tape and make the process smoother and quicker to get through," said Miranda Fitzgerald, an attorney at Lowndes, Drosdick, Doster, Kantor & Reed, P.A., who headed Mayor Teresa Jacobs' Regulatory Streamlining Task Force.

However, critics worry that some of the public input and review cuts go too far. Attorney Rick Geller has served on a citizen advisory board targeted by the report, and he agrees with its calls to revise parking-lot rules that often create seas of pavement, and a push to update Orange's zoning codes to discourage sprawl.

But Geller said by email that recommendations to curb certain community meetings and advisory reviews, as well as exempting the Development Review Committee from open-meeting laws, would all face stiff opposition.

"Streamlining should not come at the expense of citizen oversight," Geller said.

The task-force proposals are part of a larger effort to reignite a building industry stung by the recession. For instance, commissioners have reduced growth impact fees by 25 percent and opened a new one-stop shop for permitting services.

Many of the task-force recommendations, such as bringing more of the reviews online, curbing wait times and shifting staff resources, are not controversial. Some changes were made while the 15-member panel of engineers, architects and others tied to the development industry met over the past 18 months.

"Technology was a big issue," said Fitzgerald. "We've got to get into the 21st century here and make sure everything is interactive."

However, Fitzgerald acknowledged the push to exempt the powerful Development Review Committee from open meetings could be controversial. Developers say that since the staff that sits on the review committee are subject to open-meeting laws, it's hard to call last-minute meetings to solve a problem on a pending project.

"There's a fair amount of sentiment for the staff to work more collaboratively than they do now," Fitzgerald said.

Another measure that could face fire is a call to eliminate the two-year waiting period on rejected projects. That helped keep a massive Innovation Way East project from quickly coming back after commissioners in 2010 voted down the development and its plans for more than 6,300 homes in east Orange County.

"It's a huge delay when we're trying to get the economy cranked up," Fitzgerald said, adding that it hurts any chances of quick project changes to quell opposition. "It seems like two years is way too long to wait."

When the proposals were rolled out late last month, commissioners were generally supportive. However, Commissioner Jennifer Thompson said getting rid of the two-year waiting period on rejected projects, and closing the development-review committee meetings, could prove unpopular in her district.

"My heartburn falls on taking the public out of the process," Thompson said.

County leaders are expected to take up all the proposals and decide which ones to implement by spring.